Drat! Now that you've blown my cover, both as a liberal closet-fascist - merely a small cog in our left-wing conspiracy to hoodwink right-thinking Americans into believing that we're merely broad-minded, tolerant folk not bound by authoritarianism and orthodoxy - and as a shameless pedant, I might as well indulge that schoolmasterly bent of mine by quoting an entry from the New Penguin English Dictionary for your benefit:

corporal - adj - of or affecting the body: corporal punishment

Admittedly, I was teasing you, but my intention was not to cause bodily anguish (to your "corporal sensibilities"), but rather to induce you to at least try to think clearly.

I fail to see why any discussion of the merits and ramifications of Obamacare should not be relevant to the question of how Republicans of various persuasions are reacting and are going to react to it. The crux of the arguments for repealing or hamstringing Obama's health plan is the out-and-out lie that socialized medicine will not benefit the overwhelming majority of Americans, but rather only certain corporate (not corporal, my dear friend!) interests.

Since when did the GOP leadership lose accountability to its grass-roots membership? If this leadership has to become accountable to its grass roots again, it begs the question as to when if ever the Republican leadership felt any sense of accountability or responsibility to any base of non-wealthy membership. For the last hundred years the Republican party has been the representative of Big Business and has garnered the votes of those gullible enough to believe that supporting plutocrats and oligarchs lies in their best interest.

Where I live in Europe, socialized medicine is an established everyday reality. Health care is cheaper, better and more efficient than in the US. Europeans enjoy longer life expectancies and a lower infant-mortality rate than Americans. The higher taxes that we pay do not go to the health-care sector, but rather to other social programs that Americans would also be wise to emulate, if they can ever afford them.

The Tea Party is, after all, a loose association of thousands of affluent, articulate persons who hitherto have left the governing to the professionals. To their dismay, the professionals seem not to know what they are doing. Right now the professionals still dominate the caucus. The election has brought in a lot of semi-professionals and even amateurs. It remains to be seen how the groups blend.

American health care is expensive because of a vast burden of regulations (Federal and State) and subsidy programs (which have the same effect of increasing costs as the subsidies for higher education have in pushing up tuition fees) that have piled up over decades.

The "Affordable HealthCare Act" (Obamacare) does nothing to get rid of this vast web of regulations or get rid of the government spending schemes. Instead it vastly ADDS to them - it (over thousands of pages) piles up a vast mountain of extra burdens.

The inevitable consequence of this will be that the costs of health cover will rise (and rise by huge amounts) - indeed this is already happening as insurers factor in future costs (of mandates and so on) and companies start to drop health cover.

Indeed hundreds of wavers have already been granted to companies and unions - if they have the right political pull.

Does Lexington care about the increase in health costs? Or about the destruction of what is left of the rule of law by the fact that one enterprise (if it has the political contacts in the Administration) can be spared some of the costs - but another enterprise (that does not have the correct "friends") gets hit?

If you do care Lexington you show no sign of caring.

The Speaker Elect knows perfectly well that Obamacare, if it goes into effect, will price all but the very rich (George Soros and co) out of private health care - everyone else will, over time, be forced into the government controlled "exchanges" with the crony "private" health providers that the government will control every aspect of.

Of course, Speaker Elect B. could be told (quietly) "you and your family will be looked after" but I hope he cares more about other people than Lexington does.

"ArbyH isn't far off the mark with his "corporatism" quote, so you needn't bother foaming at the mouth if it offends your more delicate corporate sensibilities."

Not far from the mark means off the mark nevertheless.

And my sensibilities are CORPORAL - I reject the far-left (fascist) idea of a society as a united body - not CORPORATE.

But you know this perfectly well. You're just putting your couple of cents into one of the oldest propagandist operations of the Left aimed at public deception. That is, presenting fascism and Nazism as far-right ideologies, when the opposite is true.

As to the ArbyH's "cogent points" about the health care, the topic of this thread is Democrats' chances to use differences among the House Republicans on the issue of the bill's repeal. Now that Republicans became once again accountable to the grass-roots voters, who require exactly this, the details of Obamacare don't change the picture.

Spelling and ignorance are two different things, and those with perfect spelling are sometimes ignorant in much more substantial way. However, just to indulge your pedantic requirements: "capiche" is the Italo-American dialectical form of "capisci"; the UK form is "capisce".

That said, even my pen name here is misspelled, and it doesn't bother me at all.

(Ought to have taken some of my own advice about spelling properly!)
Reluctant Polutter:

What a primitive trick, favourite among the Right propagandists: take an out of context quote with a any body's name under it, and lie what you wish.

First of all, ArbyH isn't far off the mark with his "corporatism" quote, so you needn't bother foaming at the mouth if it offends your more delicate corporate sensibilities.

Secondly, you don't address any of the cogent points ArbyH made about health care in the main part of his post (possibly because you can't make any equally cogent rebuttal, but fly wildly off the handle when he quotes Mussolini.

Thirdly, before labeling anyone else as being ignorant, you really ought to take time to learn to spell, or at least look words up in a dictionary if you're unsure. The word "capisce" comes from the Italian verb "capire" and cannot be spelled "capiche", which would be pronounced quite differently, verstanden?

What a primitive trick, favourite among the Right propagandists: take an out of context quote with a any body's name under it, and lie what you wish.

First of all, ArbyH isn't far off the mark with his "corporatism" quote, so you needn't bother foaming at the mouth if it offends your more delicate corporate sensibilities.

Secondly, you don't address any of the cogent points ArbyH made about health care in the main part of his post (possibly because you can't any equally cogent rebuttal, but fly wildly off the handle when he quotes Mussolini.

Thirdly, before labeling anyone else as being ignorant, you really ought to take time to learn to spell, or at least look words up in a dictionary if you're unsure. The word "capisce" comes from the Italian verb "capire" and cannot be spelled "capiche", which would be pronounced quite differently, verstanden?

What a primitive trick, favourite among the Left propagandists: take an out of context quote with a notorious name under it, and lie what you wish.

Mussolini's corporatism, my dear ignoramus, is a system of economic, political, and social organization that views a community as a united body ("corpus" is body in Latin; the term has nothing to do with corporations) based upon organic SOCIAL SOLIDARITY of different groups - exactly something the Left adore most. "Corporate power" in Il Duce talk means power of such cohesive society.

Mussolini left the Italian Socialist party (whose best orator and editor-in-chief of whose paper 'Avanti!' he was) because they were not radical enough for him. Fascism is to the left from socialism, capiche?

Here's something I wrote in response to an article on Europe, which is just as relevent & true about the late-great, drowning-in-debt USofA too:

"Europe/America as a whole, mirrors a dysfunctional home, on the verge of bankruptcy, with a bunch of spoilt-rotten children (citizens) who have taken control & keep on shrilly demanding their parents (governments) to buy them everything that catches their fancy, even though their exorbitant & mounting debts & bills (budget deficits) are way beyond their means already & all their credit cards (sovereign debts) are long since maxed out.

Looks like, only when America self-destructs completely, will the delusional TP & the rabid ultra-right come to their senses - if ever. Their self-absorbed, narcissistic hubris blinds them from seeing the sinister writing on their ominously disintegrating economic wall.

The problem is, it may be too late to turn the clock back then. America will have crossed the point of no return, as they zoom to their doom - a la Republican-style.

Wake up America & shake a leg, before the sky comes crashing down on you..

The more current issue is the total silence of the elected Tea Partiers over the fact that the extension of the Bush tax cuts for those earning over 250K will balloon the deficit by many billions that will have to be paid off by more goverment borrowing .

Obama promises better college education loans, health care & medicine, financial stability for this nation, better infrastructure, technology development and energy utilization, increase exports, more rational foreign policy and better foreign relations and cooperation, etc.
It isn’t a matter of bigger government, it is a matter of incentives to do the right thing and regulation of known abusers …i. e. carrot and stick.

America needs affordable healthcare for all.
Health care bill is really a trade off for more premium payers paying to the insurance companies who in turn agree to accept more participants, all of which give the medical industry a greater certainty of getting paid. Preventative medicine costs a great deal less than emergency room visits. Not only is this a move towards the greater good, but this must be done because it will lower the cost of medical treatment overall and medicare and medicaid, which is a Budget Breaker soon. It also stops some of the rotten practices of insurance companies. The insurance companies are the ones sponsoring the opposition to this, and the Republicans are the ones in corporation’s pockets selling fear and disinformation, instead of truth and patriotism.

Yes, America would be far better off if we simply left the mid-east and quit the whole world's policeman role. We are not an Army for hire, and the rest of the world could care less what happens, so why should we?

If you thought things were bad under Democrats, just wait and see what Republican ownership of just one caucus will bring. It isn’t about big government, it is about main street over wall street, right over wrong, truth over bull shit.

The tax burden has been shifted to the middle class, while the Republican tax breaks have enabled the distribution of wealth to be more unbalanced then it has ever been.
The Republican's represent only the wealthy and corporate interests, but they sell the American Dream to others, while every action they take makes sure that the others will never get there.
Most non-wealthy Republicans are foolish tools who question little, think less and eat all the manure they are fed.
Republican's buy weapon systems, while Democrats put food on the table and help kids go to college.

“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power”
~Benito Mussolini
Fascist plutocracy is the end game for the Republican Party and the Globalists (Bilderbergs).

I think the TEA party, more than anything, wants an immediate up-or-down vote on Obamacare. Most understand that President Obama would vote it, but the vote would then allow the TEA party to know who actually does/does not support it's repeal.

And then the TEA party can focus it's attention on those that voted against it's repeal.

The tea party is a wholly owned subsidiary of the republican oligarchy. It was created, financed, publicised and is directed by moneyed whack-jobs on the loony right of the hard right in order to drive the elected right wing republicans further (need I say) to the right. The goal of the whack-job republicans is the complete and total elimination of any and all remnants of social welfare programs. I don't think Europeans could understand this as it would seem to be so self destructive but that is how money works on politics here in the USA. Strangely even citizens who rely, and I mean are dependant upon medicare and social security, are moved to go out and scream about the horrors of 'socialised' medical and old age pension assistance. The concept of their own self interest has been refashioned by years of relentless right wing propaganda extolling the virtues of 'good ol' American self reliance and some kind of mythological individualism that, I guess, wards off illness and aging. Now mind you, they are not opposed to the help from fellow taxpayers for their own personal benefit, it is the 'others' who are unworthy. I know it sounds too loony to be true but most Americans don't believe in evolution either. America is you know a very religious place so magical thinking has really taken root and plays a prominent role in right-wing propaganda. You should note that the organs of this right-wing propaganda is virtually the entire mainstream media 24/7. What's happened here is pretty well described by double-speak. The condition of holding two opposing views in your head and beleiving them both. George Orwell wrote about such stuff and at the time most people thought it was just science fiction. It isn't. If I were a European, I'd be kind of concerned about the USA. These people are armed to the teeth and are going nowhere fast. They'll be needing somewhere to blow off steam soon enough. I defected myself to a place far away. I mean, back home, their crazy.

I'm afraid there are more than enough loons in the US ignorant enough to want to repeal or gut ObamaCare. A remarkably high percentage of the American electorate has already forgotten that the Bush II Administration's financial mismanagement brought on the economic woes that Obama is trying to ameliorate - with a fair measure of success. Where Obama is eroding support from his own base of rational and /or well-educated voters is with his stubborn insistence on fighting the unwinable war in Afghanistan. He should bring the troops home and stop playing "world policeman." By downsizing the military à la Bill Clinton he could save enough money to shore up the budget and pay for badly-needed civic infrastructure, educational and health-care projects.

It seems that Economist has took “Tea party so called movement" seriously and categorized it as a real movement. Tea party was nothing but a publicity stunt of GOP that worked well in 2010 and as long as works for Republican establishment is going to stay around and as soon as establishment decides, is going to vanish and go away and replace with another Republican publicity stunts. Unlike Democrats that naively and with absolute stupidity believing in American public's political intelligence, GOP leadership knows well that how great is public's ignorance and stupidity and masterfully taking advantage of it. If Democrats leadership counting on any split between a publicity stunt like "tea Party so called movement" and GOP, one more time they are demonstrating how greatly are naive and stupid. There could not be any real movement in America and system won't allow it, period. We just experienced how system manipulated and destroyed "Change Movement" in America by using all of system's tools, such as Obama himself, which stabbed the movement from back, starting the day he was elected. Just look at his cabinet and what kind of people occupied the most important posts, people like Gate and Hillary that if anyone can considered them as agents of “Change”, must be absolutely out of his/her mind. Obama has proved that he is nothing but a black carbon copy George W. Bush, only with a different shape and appearances. Just don’t count on any real movement in America, it will not happens and if happens, it will be circumvented by system, so every movement is a fake one, period.

You explain in so many words what Medicare is... fine, but irrelevant.

Obviously, you being a medical student with special needs (to use your own phrase) weren't able to catch what this Lexington's post is about - it is about Dems' chances to use differences among Republicans on the issue of Obamacare repeal to their (the Dems') political benefit. Capiche?

In my opinion, the Dems have zero chance.

Even the dullest of congressional Republicans now understands that all of a sudden they became accountable to the electorate, that just to lure voters during campaign is not enough - they must implement policies required by those who got them into Congress, or get kicked by them off.

The argument of how difficult it is to achieve the full repeal, or whatever else, just isn't on anymore. No easy ride for DC crowd, that's the core difference.

TO HANDWORN
typical misrepresntation of the facts. Perhaps you might also factor in that a large percent of US doctors are temporary or permanent immigrants whose training has been paid for by other countries. Much of US innovation including Nobel prizes (even for medicine) has come from immigrants to the US,including guest workers, most of whose education has been paid for by other countries